CYA-K – Cover Your Awesome Kid!

How and Why to Create a Paper Trail

You may have heard the acronym/expression “CYA.” AJE is adapting and editing it a little to “CYA-K” to mean “Cover Your Awesome Kid!” Why are we doing this? Because it is one of the most important pieces of advice we give families is to document your communication with the school and create a paper trail about everything related to your child’s education. We aren’t saying this because we assume that every conversation is something that you might need to prove happened, but because it will reduce the amount of information you need to hold in your head, making your work as parent and educational decision maker a little lighter.

So, when in doubt, write it out. Yes, every – single – time.
Please do it and you will be thanking yourself later.

It is always important to have the facts you need to make well informed decisions about your children’s education. Often it can feel like the school has all the information and all the power. 

However, you are entitled to meaningful participation in the educational decision-making process regarding how and where your child receives special education.  In DC parents also can make other decisions about what kind of school their child goes to.  There are a lot of important decisions to be made about education and you need reliable information to make those decisions. Keeping good records and creating a paper trail can give you the information you need. We created this document to help you do that.  

Get the records that are already out there.

One source of information is your child’s records. Please see our blog post on Records Requests. This is a great place to start.

Organize the documents and information you have.

In addition to the school providing you with records, you also have the power to collect, save, and organize your child’s documents. There are many different ways to organize your documents, and AJE can help you do so if you need.  One common strategy is here: https://www.wrightslaw.com/info/organize.file.htm.  Many families organize documents by type, and keep communications separately in chronological order.  

Commit communication to paper.

This includes all communications to and from the school, including in-person discussions, phone discussions, and video meeting discussions. In addition to documenting your regular conversations with the school, we also recommend you take your own notes at school meetings. 

How do you document a conversation?  Well, there are two main ways – one is just writing it down in a journal or log (or a note on your phone!), or you can summarize the conversation in an email to the person you spoke to.  You can also ask them to confirm that what you said was correct. We do this all the time here at AJE, and encourage parents to do it because it allows for misunderstandings to be spotted and cleared up quickly.

Keeping copies of your communications from the school is incredibly important. It is a great way for you to remember what happened, what you said, specific details, and to hold the school accountable for its actions. When you create and maintain a paper trail, you will be able to demonstrate (for example) that the school was on notice about your concerns and your child’s needs. 

We are all human and can forget things, especially specific details. You are helping your present and future self by writing out your communications via email and/or text messages to and from the school. AJE urges you to begin and continue this practice.

Here is a template for memorializing educational concerns about your child.

So, when in doubt, write it out.

Also, when you call AJE or work with another advocate or attorney, whoever you work with will likely want access to your communications with the school. If you have not saved copies of your emails before, we recommend you start saving them now. You can save them in a folder in your inbox, forward them to a back-up email, and our favorite – save each email as a PDF. Click here for instructions on how to save emails as PDFs. It is especially important to have back-up copies in case you lose access to an email address, or to specific emails online. You can also forward these emails in the future as a reminder.  

So, when in doubt, write it out.

Another great way to maintain copies of your communications is to take screenshots of your text messages and photos of any physical documents you give to or receive from the school. If you do not know how to create a screenshot, you can click on any of the links below for directions.  

1. On a computer
   1. PC aka Windows 10 
   2. Apple aka Mac
2. On a cell phone
   1. iPhone
   2. Android

If you are delivering a physical document to the school, ask the staff member at the front desk to sign and date the document to confirm receipt and then make a photocopy for you. When you receive the photocopy, please take a photo of it with your phone. 

Avoid the black hole of a child’s backpack!

Lastly, please request that the school email you all documents, consent forms, notices, letters, reports, etc.… Many schools, especially for younger children, will send documents home with the child in their backpack. Many parents report they never receive these documents, somehow, they get lost from the moment the school puts it in the backpack and the home. I am sure we can all guess the many ways these documents can get lost while in the custody of a young child. To prevent this from happening, you can send an email to the school requesting it email you all educational documents.

This Q&A illustrates possible scenarios where emailing is important for your parent advocacy. Please note, except for #1 and 2, the answer to every question below is “Yes.” Please always email the school.

This document illustrates communication techniques for a variety of interactions with school staff as well as some other helpful strategies for parents and caregivers.

This document provides a sample template for IEP meeting agendas and notetaking.